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Trotsky's rôle on the eve of the Second World War

During the thirties, Trotsky literally became the world's expert on anti-Communism. Even today, right-wing ideologues peruse Trotsky's works in search of weapons against the Soviet Union under Stalin.

In 1982, when Reagan was again preaching the anti-Communist crusade, Henri Bernard, Professor Emeritus at the Royal Military School of Belgium, published a book to spread the following urgent message:

`The Communists of 1982 are the Nazis of 1939. We are weaker in front of Moscow than we were in August 1939 in front of Hitler.'

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Bernard, op. cit. , p. 9.

All of the standard clichés of Le Pen , the fascist French Front National leader, are there:

`Terrorism is not the act of a few crazies. The basis of everything is the Soviet Union and the clandestine network of international terrorism.'

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Ibid. , p. 121.

`Christian leftism is a Western wound.

`The synchronicity of `pacifist' demonstrations shows how they were inspired by Moscow.'

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Ibid. , p. 123.

`The British commandos who went to die in the Falklands showed that there still exist moral values in the West.'

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Ibid. , p. 11.

But the tactics used by such an avowed anti-Communist as Bernard are very interesting. Here is how a man who, despite despising a `leftist Christian', will ally himself with Trotsky.

`The private Lenin was, like Trotsky, a human being .... His personal life was full of nuance ....

`Trotsky should normally have succeeded Lenin ... he was the main architect of the October Revolution, the victor of the Civil War, the creator of the Red Army ....

`Lenin had much respect for Trotsky. He thought of him as successor. He thought Stalin was too brutal ....

`Within the Soviet Union, Trotsky rose up against the imposing bureaucracy that was paralysing the Communist machine ....

`Artist, educated, non-conformist and often prophet, he could not get along with the main dogmatists in the Party ....

`Stalin was nationalist, a sentiment that did not exist either in Lenin or Trotsky .... With Trotsky, the foreign Communist Parties could consider themselves as a force whose sole purpose was to impose a social order. With Stalin, they worked for the Kremlin and to further its imperialist politics.'

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Ibid. , pp. 48--50.

We present here a few of the main theses that Trotsky put forward during the years 1937--1940, and that illustrate the nature of his absolute anti-Communist struggle. They allow one to understand why people in the Western security services, such as Henri Bernard, use Trotsky to fight Communists. They also shed some light on the class struggle between Bolsheviks and opportunists and on some aspects of the Purge of 1937--1938.

Next: The enemy is Up: Another view of Stalin Previous: The Western bourgeoisie

Fri Aug 25 09:03:42 PDT 1995